


All the Time in the World

by reeby10



Category: Doom (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Death Fix, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Getting Together, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12460071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10
Summary: Sam was dealing with the fact that her soulmate was dead. That is, until he showed up on her front porch.





	All the Time in the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



> Fandom Growth Exchange 2017 gift for Etnoe! I hope you enjoy it :D
> 
> I'd never written this fandom before, but I really had fun with it. And I have some ideas for more in this verse (and even a Reaper/Sarge prequel started!), so stay tuned...

Sam wasn’t sure Duke was her soulmate until he was dead. One moment she’d been confused, trying to work through these feelings while the world around her was literally going to hell, and then the next, it was gone. It felt like something snapped apart in her, breaking away somewhere deep, deep inside her chest. Her soulmate was gone.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have time for tears. Or thoughts even. All she had time for was survival, and that was exactly what she was going to do. Survive.

And she did, though not before some scrapes and bruises. But she was alive and breathing, and so was John, and that was the important thing. She knew she’d survived something horrific, knew she was stronger than a broken soulmate bond. It helped get her through the months of debriefing and the United Aerospace Corporation, along with the Marines, trying to play down the fact that they’d literally given orders to kill a bunch of normal, innocent humans. It helped keep her from going mad with grief and anger.

Afterward, she and John had to figure their lives out again. Being on Earth instead of at Olduvai was strange. Being with John again after so many years was strange. But her life had been built on strange, so she just powered through the bureaucratic tentacles that still snapped at them and the nightmares that kept her awake nearly every night. It was better than thinking about the ache that still lingered in the center of her chest.

Six months after The Olduvai Incident--as it was referred to in the news--they were in a little house in rural Washington. Neither of them wanted to be near many people after everything that happened, and it wasn’t like they had anyplace else to be. John had only had his bunk with the RRTS, and that was gone now.

So they threw a dart and went where it led. One town was as good as another, but at least they had some quiet and privacy. They could grieve and recover in their own time.

One afternoon, almost a year after moving to town, Sam started hearing rumors of someone new around while she was in town doing the grocery shopping. It made her nervous, something cold building in the pit of her stomach when someone said they thought the guy was military, so she cut her trip short and headed right home.

John was out tramping the woods or something, whatever it was that he did when he needed to be alone. Sam never asked. So she locked all the doors and windows and holed up in the living room with one of John’s guns. She wasn’t sure what made her so certain that this had something to do with Olduvai, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. She was going to survive.

Just as the sun was starting to fall below the horizon, there was a knock on the front door. Sam jerked out of the light doze she’d fallen into, immediately at the ready. Her hands shook a little as she gripped the gun, but she just breathed for a moment, steadying herself. There was another knock.

“Who is it?” Sam called, creeping toward the door as silent footed as she could manage.

“It’s Duke.”

For a moment, all the air went out of Sam’s lungs. It was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her head and she couldn’t breath, she couldn’t think. No, this couldn’t be real. Duke… Duke was dead.

Trembling, not sure what exactly she was hoping to see outside, Sam pulled at the corner of the drapes beside the door, peeking out. The light above the door wasn’t on, so it was a little difficult to see in the fading light of sunset, but there was no mistaking who was standing on the porch.

Sam couldn’t stop staring, her heart beating a panicked, choking rhythm that left her at a loss. She knew without a doubt that Duke had died, killed by one of the C-24 aberrations on Olduvai. She also knew without a doubt that John had thrown a grenade that had destroyed the Ark, and likely most if not all of Olduvai itself. There was no way Duke could be here now, standing on her porch.

But she had to know who--what--was. Carefully, gripping the gun so tightly she could see her knuckles going white, she unlocked the door and pulled it open as far as it would go with the chain still latched. Duke was still there, smile dropping a little as he saw the gun.

“Think you’re gonna need that?” he asked, gesturing at the gun but not otherwise moving.

“Have to be cautious.” Sam tried to keep her voice even, willing it not to crack. She felt a bit like she was cracking herself, if she was honest, unmoored and confused by everything around her. She couldn’t remember feeling quite like this since she was a child and her parents had just died. “I thought you were dead.”

Duke shrugged. “I think I was, for awhile. It didn’t take.”

It hadn’t taken with many of the others either, at least not at first. They’d been put down to keep them from killing anyone else. But Duke didn’t look like them, didn’t look like he was moments away from turning into a creature that wanted only to kill.

“What does that mean?” Sam asked, frustrated with herself for wanting to believe that he was fine. She bit down on the desire to unlatch the chain and let him in. Maybe step into the circle of his arms and let him soothe the broken feeling in her chest. “You… you shouldn’t be _alive_. I saw one of the creatures take you and kill you. And then the Ark was destroyed. There’s no way you could have made it back to Earth.”

“There was another project the United Aerospace Corporation was running, one none of us knew about,” Duke said quietly. For a moment, his eyes seemed lost, but then he shook it off. “They sent a transporter to Mars to try to salvage what was left. I don’t know how long it was after. Don’t know how long I was dead.”

Sam couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her, an involuntary response to the cold press of guilt and grief curled up tight in her gut. Duke took a step forward, concern written openly on his face, but she bit her lip and shook her head.

“Just tell me what happened,” she croaked through her too dry throat.

He was silent and for a moment, she wasn’t sure he would continue. She could see this was tearing at them both, the frayed ends of their broken soulmate bond calling out for each other. If he wasn’t really him, surely it wouldn’t be this painful, would it?

“One day I woke up in a lab on Earth, hooked up to a dozen machines,” he said finally. “But I was alive. Somehow. And stronger than before, too. I don’t really know the specifics, they didn’t want to tell me anything. Just wanted to fix what they could and burn the rest, I guess, because I think I was the only one who survived whatever they did. At least, I never saw anybody else.”

Strange as the story was, Sam could believe it. She’d already seen what the United Aerospace Corporation could do quietly, dangerously, without any oversight. It sounded like they might have even used C-24 again, or something like it. If they could create monsters, why couldn’t they bring someone back from the dead? Only, they weren’t so keen on letting anyone else know about their mistakes.

“Surely they didn’t just… let you go, did they?” she asked, shaking her head incredulously.

Duke grimaced, hunching his shoulders before seeming to consciously relax them. As if he thought he might scare her and didn’t want to. She was a little resentful over how much that relaxed _her_ , because she couldn’t afford to relax around him. Not yet.

“I think they were gonna keep me forever, make me just another test subject,” he replied. There was palpable bitterness in his voice, but Sam couldn’t blame him. She was pretty bitter too. “So I did what I had to do. I escaped.”

Sam raised her eyebrows. “You escaped. Just like that.”

“Hey, don’t sound so surprised,” he teased, smiling like she remembered the first time they met. “I was prime RRTS material, I got skills.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She paused a second, considering her options. She wanted so much to believe it was really Duke, really alive. And everything he said sounded true, even likely, after everything she’d seen on Olduvai. But the real kicker was the way the hollow ache in her chest felt the tiniest bit warmer just seeing him and talking him. That couldn’t be faked.

“Do you wanna come inside?” she asked, reaching up to finally unlatch the chain. She flipped the safety on her gun and put it on the table near the door, close enough if she needed it, but no longer at the ready.

His grin widened, shoulders finally relaxing completely. “Hell yeah.”

Sam grabbed two beers from the fridge in the kitchen, then led him into the living room. It was small since she and John didn’t need much space, so even though she and Duke were in separate chairs, there still wasn’t more than a foot of space between them. The cold claw in her chest seemed to be melting little by little, and they hadn’t even touched yet.

They sat in silence for several minutes, sipping at their beers and awkwardly avoiding eye contact. Inside, with all barriers between them gone, it seemed they didn’t know what to say. Sam had to remind herself that for all the time she spent mourning him, they didn’t actually know each other. A few hours together was all they’d had, and even then, it hadn’t really been _together_.

Duke cleared his throat and Sam jerked her head around almost too fast. He smiled, smaller now. “I’m sorry.”

“For…?” she asked, grip tightening on her beer bottle. She had a feeling she knew exactly what for.

“For dying. For leaving you,” he said with a shrug. It looked more casual than it probably was.

“Don’t you have to be _with_ someone to leave them?” Her heart beat a little faster in her chest as she waited for the answer. Waited to hear that he’d felt the same thing she had.

He gave her a look that said he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending there’s nothing there between us?” he asked, leaning forward until they were just inches apart. “Back there, I understood. No time for soulmates in a battlezone. But now it’s different. Right?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, unable to deny it. She might still be scared, might be newly paranoid about every bump in the night, but it was different now.

Sam wasn’t sure which of them reached out first, but their hands met in the middle, the first brush of skin on skin igniting the hollow in her chest like fire, consuming her from the inside out. For the first time since Duke had died, she felt warm. She felt right.

“Wow,” he breathed, grinning wildly. It was infectious, and Sam found an answering grin growing on her own face. “This is… I forgot how this felt.”

“It’s not like we had much time before,” she replied, grin going a little crooked. He nodded solemnly, a considering light in his eyes, and then he leaned forward and kissed her.

If the brush of fingers had been a fire, this was an explosion. Sam pushed forward with a groan, closing the space between them entirely. They were both perched at the edges of their seats, too eager to care about the precariousness of their positions. That didn’t matter right now. Now was for more important things.

They panted into each other’s mouths, tongues twining together in a way that sent pleasant frissons of excitement through Sam’s body. Duke’s hand was at her hip, just slipping under the edge of her shirt. Heat bloomed there too, spreading until her whole body was engulfed in tingling warmth. She never wanted it to stop, but she, at least, needed air.

Sam pulled away, smiling when Duke leaned forward, chasing the taste of her lips. She was breathing heavily, a flush high on her cheeks. Duke reached out and ran a hand down the side of her face, cupping her jaw like she was something precious.

“Hey,” she whispered, hand rising to cover his. “It’s ok. We’ve got all the time in the world now.”

He nodded, pausing for a moment before his smile turned a little wry. “Until John gets home and kicks my ass to next week.”

His answer startled a laugh out of her. She could imagine her protective little brother getting all up in arms over her and Duke. But he knew as well as she did--perhaps even more, if her guesses about him and Sarge were correct--that soulmate bonds were special, were to be protected. He’d be happy for her once he got over the surprise, though he’d probably still act like a grump.

“That is definitely something to deal with later,” she said once she’d caught her breath. She felt lighter for the laughter, which was a novel feeling these days. “He won’t be back for a while. Sometime tomorrow afternoon, probably.”

“What are we going to do until then?” Duke asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Sam grinned. “How about a tour of my bedroom?”

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome. If you like my fic, feel free to come hit me up [on tumblr](http://voldiebuns.tumblr.com/)!


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